Honduran Tortillas

The Dominican Republic is home to casave (cassava bread, made from dried yuca) and sancocho (a soup with lots of kinds of meat and green bananas and yuca and potatoes).  But while I have eaten sancocho and figured out how to make garlic toast and french toast with the casave, I haven't learned how to make either one.  

What I have learned, from my Honduran friend, Ruth, is how to make tortillas Honduran style.  I first made them at her house, and now tonight I made them in mine.  The flour is an essential part of it, but I know that will be easier to find in the U.S. than here.  (Ruth actually told me that the one store that had it when she came stopped carrying it and she cried in the grocery store, tortillas are such a part of home for her--she was very excited to find that they sell it now at Bravo, our new grocery store which opened a few months ago, which thankfully also sells the only turkey lunch meat I've found here that looks like it's made of turkey.)  

Ruth showed me the steps for making homemade tortillas, and I'm going to show you how she does it.  It's not super fast, but it's not at all difficult.  I was so proud of my Honduran dinner tonight.  Ruth told me I was a regular Honduran "Doña."  

First add the flour to a bowl and some water until the texture is such that you can make a ball.    It's not necessary to measure, which is fortunate, since I pretty much never do.  (At some point here you want to heat up your cast iron griddle, or whatever griddle or frying pan or tortilla pan you want to use nice and hot--do not add oil, you make these dry.)

OK, next two steps:  Cut big circles out of a ziplock bag, you'll get two lying of the exact same size out of one bag.  Smoosh your ball into a patty, and then put it between the two plastic circles on top of a cutting board.  You put another  cutting board on top and lean your weight down until you have a big flat circular tortilla.  So it's cutting board, plastic circle, dough patty, plastic circle, cutting board.  

Then you peel the plastic off of one side of your tortilla, lay the tortilla onto your hand, and peel off the other piece of plastic.  If you're Honduran, there is an in-between-step here where you round the edges so that you have a perfect circle, but when I made them solo you can see I skipped that step.  Don't look, Ruth!

You lay them on the hot griddle and cook the first side for a minute or two, little cracks will form, then flip and do the same to the other side.  (The blackened parts of mine were caused by my messy grill--I was loading some finished ones with beans and spinach and cheese to feed my hungry waiting children before I'd finished all my tortillas and some cheese got on the griddle, yours won't get black edges.)  When you finish the second side you do something a little odd.  Flip back to the first side and press down firmly with a dry washcloth.  If it's done it will puff up in the middle, or where you've just pressed.  It's so cool

Finally, you just tuck the finished tortillas in a towel and wait for them to cool (or, better yet, eat them hot).

I made some blended red beans to go with it, because Ruth told me that's what you serve with them.  When I heat up the leftovers I will refry them, then they'll really be legit.  I made mine with some homemade salsa and extra cilantro, Ruth hasn't yet taught me how to make them.

Dominican Birthday Party

When Abigail turned one, we made a blueberry cake and blew up a few balloons.  My parents came over.  There were some presents.  She took some first steps.  It was an ideal party.  I'd say it registered at about a one on a scale of size, magnitude, and expense.

Such was not our experience at the party for our neighbor's son who just turned one.  Apparently here the one year-old birthday party is a really big deal.  It was at a facility that was decorated at the level I'd expect for a prom or wedding reception (though thematically a little different).  There were photographers, a clown, a juggler, a Mickey Mouse, a man on bouncy stilts, a dancer who also did face painting, a magician, two DJ's, an assistant, and a woman who did cotton candy and popcorn.

But the part that surprised me most of all was the volume of the music.  It was such that I can't imagine the one year-old could bear to listen to it.  I was of course considering the long-term hearing implications for my children.  But they were into it.  Jesse initially covered his ears, but once they started asking, "Quien quiere un premio?" ("Who wants a prize?") he was all in.  They had to clap and jump as loudly and enthusiastically as possible to win.  Abigail won one out of sheer cuteness.  I mean it's hard to compete with a tiny thing jumping with all her might.

Anyway, it was wild.  And I'd have to call it a culture shock moment for me.  Less "culture stress" which I've read is just the fatigue that comes from having to work harder to do every day kind of tasks, and more all out "culture shock."  My ears actually hurt.  And I found the clown a little scary.  But it was a true Dominican experience.

It was as if someone had seen my lame attempt at a one year-old party and said, "You call that a party?  This is a party!"

Las Terrenas y La Playa Bonita

We just celebrated Dominican Labor Day with a long weekend trip to Las Terrenas, which is in the region of Samana.  It was gorgeous.  Curved beaches with mountains and palm trees and cool rocks in the water.  And there are 60 different varieties of palm trees in Samana.  It's not an area where the beaches are developed, there aren't houses, just stretches of empty beach with occasional restaurants nearby.  It's incredible!  Owen's parents were visiting, and we had a wonderful time there.  We went to a different beach each day.  I wanted to share some photos from our trip:

The rounded beaches with mountains in the background made for stunning landscapes.

Highway view

The road cut through the mountains.

The grandparents with the family on the beach.

Right behind those bushes there was a man who took lunch orders in the morning.  Then he'd take a boat out, catch the fish, and fry it up with some plantains and potatoes on the side.

Saving the computer with rice

The spring rains have apparently started.  Today for the second time it's raining with hail.  We heard about the May rainy season, but didn't take it seriously until this weekend.

When we first came to the Dominican Republic, we made the mistake of leaving the windows open a few times while we were out of the house.  Well, there are windows everywhere to keep air flowing here, and the rain can come in at a right degree angle, so an unbelievable amount of water can get in within ten or 15 minutes.  While mopping up inches of water which had covered the floors in our absence, and anxiously testing out the electric piano to see if it was ruined, we vowed we'd remember to close the windows when we left the house every single time.  And we did stay serious about the windows near the keyboard.

But once the hurricanes were over (late fall), rain didn't come from any direction except the south.  We stopped having a strong respect for the unpredictability of the Caribbean rains.   If it rained at all, it rained in a reasonable manner, and at most we'd have a slight wet patch in front of a window if we left it open.  We were fine for about five months as long as we closed the windows on the south side of the house, and we'd close those pretty faithfully each time we left the house  We also seemed to (almost) always be home when it rained.

All this to say, we were unprepared for the torrents that hit our house on Friday afternoon while we were stuck on the Autopista (major road here).  By the time we got home we had an inch of standing water in several rooms of the house.  More problematically, the computer had been left open near the window next to the balcony, where normally it would be quite safe (it's not your average rain that blows across the balcony and into the living room).  And the computer was wet.  And it wasn't working.

Thankfully, I'd had experience getting water out of our front gate opener (after accidentally throwing it in the laundry in Owen's pants pocket).  Someone told me to put it in a plastic bag with rice for a few days.  And someone else told me to put it in the sun.  So I put it in a plastic bag with rice in the sun and had it working in a few short hours.

So when our computer wasn't working Saturday morning after the Friday afternoon rain exposure (I can't believe we didn't even deal with it until the next day), I put it in a bag with rice.  I didn't like the idea of leaving the computer outside in the sun, and plus it wasn't sunny, so I heated up the oven slightly and turned it off.  Then I put the computer (which was in the bag with the rice) in the oven.  I kept reheating the oven off and on for several hours and kept the computer in there for a while.  When I checked again I could get it to go onto Windows and connect to the internet.  Some of the keys weren't working, enough that I couldn't really type on it.  We watched too much Netflix on the computer last night, which may have heated out the last of the water.  By this morning we were back in business.  As of now, only the "end" key isn't working, and I mean, really, who needs the "end" key anyway?

I thought I'd share this, because who knows who else it dealing with a wet computer?  It worked for us!  We are so thankful to not have to buy a new computer.

Updated family photo

Balcony Nights

We replaced the plastic chairs on our balcony with some rocking chairs and a little table, and we put some flowers in pots, and I'll tell you, our balcony is our new favorite place to be.  The breeze at night out here is incredible (a lovely relief after the hot "spring" days of 90-something degrees), and the chairs are way comfier than their former hard plastic forbears.  I like to tilt one back until it leans against the window bars like a faux recliner.  We can tilt a lamp from the living room to shine out of the window so we can read out there, and we can still get movies to stream on Netflix.

It's almost like having a new room added to the house.  A room with a broad night view of palm trees and of lights on the mountains and the lit-up monument in downtown Santiago.  When the power goes out on our street, as it does frequently, it's really dark and quiet (most people don't have inverters like the school provides for us) and beautiful.  And one of our favorite things to do is watch the fruit bats swoop up to grab the small red palm tree fruits hanging right in front of the balcony--it gives us a delicious shivery kind of thrill.

Strategic Refreshment

"Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food."  -Hippocrates

I've heard that the average American adult eats 1/2 piece of fruit a day.  Actually, the way I heard the statistic, every other adult eats one piece of fruit per day.  But Dominicans eat fruit.  And they drink even more of it.  They make juice out of everything.  Pineapple, orange, banana, passionfruit (chinola), papaya, mango, strawberry, melon, cherry, lemon (which here really is lime), coconut, zapote, guava, watermelon, guanabana (a thick white fruit that is like nothing you've ever tasted outside of the Caribbean).

And fruit juices are seen to be basically medicinal.  Someone may be sick and mention to you that they're getting better because they're drinking cups and cups of cherry juice.  Or if someone gets Dengue fever people make them guava and red bell pepper juice.  There's a fruit called haguay that makes a juice that to my family tastes a little like paint-thinner that's supposed to be good for circulation.  I offered my maid a date the other day and she asked me what it's used for.  Health and fruit are closely connected here.  And I bet in some ways people are healthier here, even with all the poverty and American influence on the diet, because they drink so much fresh fruit juice.  I mean, the American diet is not exactly world-renowned for being healthy.

Next time you're feeling under the weather, try a piece of fruit.

I'm excited to have figured out a trick with picking watermelons here.  Farmer's don't wait for things to ripen here, but they also like to let things get large.  So a small watermelon is a much safer bet.  You can bet they ignored it for a while before picking it because it was considered too small.

Doctor's Visit

Today was one of those days, one of those very un-American days.

I went to the foot doctor this morning.  The school nurse drove me, even though it was my second visit, because I knew I'd never find the place--this is not a map-friendly kind of city--and because I didn't know if I could explain the pre-authorization requirements the insurance gave me for my orthodic inserts in Spanish.  I got there a little after 9:00 and put my name on the list for an appointment.  There are no appointment times most places here--it's like the deli, you get a number and wait and wait.  I was number 18.

Jesse's pre-school gets out at 11:30, so I needed to be able to leave by 11:15 or soon after (I can always, in a pinch, get Owen to pick up Jesse and keep him in his office for a few minutes).  Abigail had asked to stay with someone to avoid going to the doctor's office, which was actually surprisingly out of character for her.  She likes to stay glued to my side.  So I was hoping the doctor would tear through the 17 people ahead of me, but the school nurse knew to ask if the doctor was in the office yet, and he wasn't.

He came in after 10:00, right after Abigail had called to see if I was coming home soon.  It seemed unlikely he'd get through the 17 people ahead of me in an hour, so I decided to go get the kids and come back.

I had paid close attention to the streets we took on the way there and I tried to anticipate and troubleshoot for any problems I might have with the receptionist or doctor and . . . wait for it . . . decided to do my doctor's appointment alone.  (Well, with two kids).  I know, underwhelming, but it was actually really intimidating.

I was so proud of myself that I got myself (and my two pbj-smeared children) to the doctor's office by 11:30, and everything seemed to be going smoothly.  But when I got to the car garage, there weren't any real spaces left.  They told me I could park there, but I had to leave my keys.  To contextualize this, I should add that I had just paid 50 cents to park for the previous hour, and there were several people working there, so I could imagine that it could be pretty tempting to steal a nice new-ish SUV (we don't own it, I know, it sounds appalling).

And I thought, shoot!  No way!  It's not even our car, really.  And it would really stink if it got stolen.  And who knows if people from this country would even consider doing this (because, in my experience, our Dominican friends can be even more careful than we are).

And then I thought, what in the world else am I going to do?  So I called Owen and told him he had to sign off on it for me, so to speak, and he thought it was probably fine, and I handed over the keys.

So I went in to find out that they were on patient number eight.  Which was wildly depressing.  So we started with the bag-o-fun that I'd packed.  We played games, we read books, we colored, we crawled on the furniture, we played "tell Mommy what to draw, and make it silly."

Part-way through the fun I felt like I just had to check on the car.   So we went out and the car was there, relief. I told the two car attendants, who were dancing good-naturedly, that I wanted to get my iced tea out of the car.  They reached up into the tree above them to pluck the keys off a branch and I went to get the tea.  I figured it was a good sign that it was still there, and it can't hurt to have checked in, and I went back to wait another hour.

We didn't get out of the doctor's office until 2:00.  It was quite a day.  And then the car attendants wanted my ticket, which I assure you, I was never given.  That was a little tense.  I told them, in I'm sure perfectly fluent and self-assured Spanish tones, that the woman who had been there had just taken my keys and not given me a ticket.  Eventually they just took my keys back out of the tree and handed them over--and perhaps overcharged me just a smidge, but OK, it was still under two dollars.

Quite an adventure, just thought I'd share.

Happy Easter!

We just had the best Spring break trip to Cabarete!  We stayed in a really quiet section on the outskirts of the beach areas in a house with a view of a tropical garden out front and a basically deserted beach.  Our friends joined us for most of the time we were there, and we had a blast! 

Family beach shot

Chilling in a hole

Jesse buried

 (I forgot my camera on the beach, so these are taken with Owen's phone, excuse the quality.)

Happy Birthday, Owen!

Y Feliz Cumpleanos, Diana!

Spanish Fatigue

I am tired from Spanish.  Not "of" Spanish (though I have my moments), but "from."  Little every day interactions like calling the corner store for water, greeting the neighbors, answering wrong number calls on the phone, asking where things are at the grocery store (which is not arranged intuitively), listening to the sermon and talking to everyone in Spanish (more or less) Sunday mornings, and reading signs are all exhausting when added up in time over time.  Not to mention converting pesos to dollars!  I have to do this in my head with every price because I still need to know what it would be in dollars to know if it's expensive or not.  And since there are about 40 pesos to a dollar, it's some pretty tough math.  Sometimes I'm like, wow, that's a thousand pesos??, only to realize that that's $25.  Or if I'm shortchanged 10 pesos I can remind myself, OK, we're talking a quarter here . . .

But it's interesting, I think culture shock is mostly having to notice more around me than I would in my home culture (because things are different and I have to analyze it and think, for example, wow, is it a good idea for him to be carrying a propane tank on the back of a moto?) and having to think more than usual to talk or perform daily interactions.  Just a lot of energy.  So still wanting to learn a lot of Spanish but not wanting to make much effort these days.  Just want to become fluent without trying.

The Open Market

Tiny peppers

 One of the more interesting, and, perhaps, overwhelming, sections of Santiago (for me, anyway) is the Hospedaje (the open markets).  My brave mother wanted to go see it when she and my dad were here a few weeks ago, though it is not a place frequented by tourists.  I just discovered the pictures on my camera.

Lots of varieties of peppers, okra (back right), carrots and eggplant (top center), chayote squash (the green pear-shaped squash top right), cabbage, cilantro and other fresh herbs

You can get fresh coconut milk on the street, you even get a straw.  My kids like it, I might if I added a bunch of sugar or something.

Parts of it are out on the sidewalks, for blocks and blocks.  And then parts of it are in storefronts or tucked away into small alleyways.  Spices and grains, for example, are often off of the street a little and sometimes down an alley.

Cinnamon sticks (front bottom), slingshots (top middle)--I bought the kids slingshots for Christmas but they were confiscated at the airport when an x-ray machine started beeping: "This woman has plastic slingshots in her bag."  "Um, actually, they're metal."  "You have metal slingshots in here?!" . . .  I bought them another one before I took this picture.

We had such a nice adventure, I'm glad my parents are so fun!

My Ill-Fated Garden Patch

The story of my garden is one that perhaps will illustrate some of the aspects of my life here in the Dominican Republic.  While still in the States, I dreamed with high hopes of my lush Dominican garden that I was told would be of such fruitful soil that if you throw a handful of beans over your shoulder and wait three days you'd have a vine.  

Somehow my arrangement and facilitation of the process of digging the garden, having a fence built around it to keep cows, dogs, chickens, and even people from walking through it, and "preparing" the soil took seven months.  I will say that serious heat was a deterrent until about October (when it was still seriously hot), but this whole experiment (which may have come to an end) has really been too comical.

Here's the timeline:

• I started begging kind people we knew at Owen's workplace (with way more important things to do) for a fence for my hypothetical garden
• suggestions that perhaps a square of prepared soil would be a good start to getting the fence led to many thoughts of, "Hmm, perhaps I will pay someone to turn the soil for me; this heat and humidity does not exactly call my name and get me outside into that little wilderness outside my window . . . once it's a little cooler perhaps."
• in October, I paid someone to turn the soil
• a few weeks later, someone took all of the topsoil I had so handily left turned over and exposed without a fence
• several months later, a fence was built
• a week or so later, I tried to work in the garden (with my lovely gardening assistant, Abigail) and discovered that the soil that was there was very similar in texture to modeling clay--it made formidable balls, repelled water, and had to be hacked at with a sharp object to "turn" it
• a day or so later, I resumed begging, this time for some topsoil I knew about that I hoped kind people from Owen's workplace (with more important things to be doing) could be induced to deliver for me
• a month or so after that, without my knowledge, topsoil was delivered for me by kind people from Owen's workplace (who still had much more important things to be doing) and placed right outside of the fence
• a few days later, my much-improving but still imperfect student of the Spanish language husband informed me that the downstairs neighbor told him that someone had stolen the topsoil that had apparently been delivered without our knowledge
• a few days after that, the neighbor's wife informed me that now the topsoil was actually stolen (Owen had misunderstood his interaction a few days prior to the theft: the neighbor was telling him that many people were trying to steal our topsoil but he had chased them off multiple times)
• a few weeks after that, the owner of the land, who had given permission for the said garden, came and put up a nice new "For Sale by Owner" sign
• a few days after that, I found out that the enormous garden a neighbor has right next to my tiny one is now going to be removed in respect to that "For Sale by Owner" sign and I may have to remove my fence
• Current day:  I give up!  Good thing local produce is cheap here!

To Have . . . and Know It

One of the most striking differences for me since I moved here is that I now know myself to be wealthy in a way I did not before.  Owen makes less money here than he did in the states, but here it is far more noticeable that we have so very much.  I think the reason I notice it so much more here is because 1) unlike in America, the poor are not separated from those who have enough to be comfortable, and 2) there is no social safety net in the Dominican Republic and so poverty is much more severe.

I wanted to mention two different common occurances here that I find so shocking to my American sensibilities.

The first I see every day.  Men with severe handicaps or severe deformations (something we are not accustomed to seeing with the medical system in the U.S. intervening when children are very young) beg at busy intersections to make a living.  Almost all of them have such a serious physical ailment that they are unable to walk well and/or have such deformed hands (or, literally, no hands) that they can barely hold the cup to receive money.  With no welfare or public assistance of any kind, these men are at the mercy of drivers to provide for themselves and, possibly, their families.  Many drivers keep change handy to give to these men.

The second has happened more infrequently, but enough times that it is not wholly unexpected to me now.  People will ring the doorbell to ask if we have any food.  I don't know why I find that so shocking, but somehow it is one of the most un-American experiences I have here.

I will say that the one benefit to the government/societal systems here is that there is a lot less confusion about whether or not to give to the poor.  Yes.  Obviously, something far more comprehensive and long-term is needed, involving education and health care and governmental reform and many things I'm sure I am not even aware of.  It just feels more personal when there aren't organizations taking care of it for us.

Gotta Be Proud!

Our boys with good friends of our good friends here in the D.R.  It's a dangerous thing when boys are left unattended for a few minutes!  We have been so blessed by good friends here, God is good!  We feel very blessed.

Constanza: Little Switzerland

We spent some time in the mountains last weekend on a retreat with some of the school staff.  It was amazing, so cool and beautiful.  We wore sweatshirts all weekend, played games, hiked on a mountaintop, and rode horses.  Here are some pictures!

Perspectives on Suffering

I remember a book from my childhood about a man who was having trouble sleeping--I don't remember the name of the book.  There was a tapping on his window from a tree and a leaky faucet.  He went to the judge and told him he was having trouble sleeping, and the judge told him to get a cat.  That night, the man heard the taps and drips and the cat meowing and moving around on the bed.  

He went to the judge and said that he still couldn't sleep.  The judge told him to get a dog.  Of course, then the man had a dog and cat making noise and moving around in addition to the tapping and dripping sound.  The story continues with the judge recommending that this man fill his bed with a cat, a dog, a cow, a horse, and I don't remember how many other animals.

The man goes back to the judge, desperate, and tells him: "I still can't sleep!  Now there's mooing, neighing, barking, meowing, tapping, and dripping!"  And the judge says: "Get rid of the cat, the dog, the cow, the horse, and all the other animals."  And the man gets blissful sleep.

I feel a little bit like the man in that story--before getting rid of the animals.  I had sleep troubles in Philadelphia, where there would be sounds of car engines, occasional loud music from cars in the block behind us, a very occasional block party that lasted until 11:00, or an occasional dog left outside at night or overnight.

Now I live in the Dominican Republic, where each night there are roosters crowing, dogs barking (dogs live outside, it's warm and theft is a huge problem here), and my neighbor's unbelievably loud house alarm going off in the middle of the night.  Needless to say, I feel like I've jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.  I can only hope that things for me will end as they did for the man in the story.

This morning, after the house alarm woke me up at both 1:30 and 3:30 during the night and I didn't sleep much at all (after a week of interrupted sleep from the house alarm across the street), I was feeling a little low.  I must admit that I don't often listen to sermons, but in my discouraged state I thought it would be a good idea.  I found a sermon on suffering by Tim Keller to listen to while I made granola--Tim Keller being my favorite preacher both because he has such great insight and because he doesn't have a "preacher's voice."  

The sermon was really powerful and addressed a more profound suffering than I'm experiencing.  I found it really moving, though, and felt very encouraged.  I wanted to share it, in case anyone's interested:

The Furious Love of Jesus

(You have to click on the sermon with this name when you get to the webpage of free sermons related to suffering.)

An Original Favorite Color

Abigail, conforming to gender stereotypes, likes pink.  She is starting to learn other colors, but she could only correctly identify the color pink for the last year.  Every day she wants to wear pink, every day she wants a pink accessory, every day she wants to drink from the pink cup.  The most amusing recent example of pink insistence is that when we sing "Jesus  Loves the Little Children" Abigail wants us to add the color pink to the list.  She told me she's pink, so it's a legitimate request.  Since in somewhat recent years the color brown was added (well, since when I was little), it's pretty tough to squeeze the pink in:

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world:
red, brown, yellow, black, pink, and white, they are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

I'm glad Jesus loves our pink little girl.

By the way, we took that picture yesterday.  85 and sunny.  :)

Better Late Than Never

A techie friend of mine explained how to get the pictures off my phone using my husband's Blackberry charger (thanks Steve!).  I thought late Thanksgiving pictures of the slaughter of our turkey were still interesting enough to post in January for those of you who read the November entry and won't go back to see the pictures I now added:

The last two pictures are of the butcher who slaughtered my turkey for 50 cents and a chicken head that was on the floor of the slaughterhouse that I almost stepped on by accident.

Homemade Ground Cinnamon

Yesterday morning, I realized I had no ground cinnamon left for the baked oatmeal I was making.  But I found a big stick of cinnamon I'd bought at the big central market when I was there buying my turkey in November.  (A side note:  I had also bought two very affordable metal and rubber slingshots which I thought the boys would love for Christmas--and which were a tenth of the price of the beautiful wooden ones I'd seen on Etsy, but I had them in my carry-on when I flew in to the states and they were confiscated by TSA, who did not think that metal slingshots were appropriate carry-on items.  I'm pretty sure some TSA children are at this moment causing all kinds of mischief with them somewhere near Miami airport).

So I needed cinnamon and had a big yard-long stick of it.  I broke it into pieces over my knee, put it in a bag and smacked the pieces with a hammer, and then ground the pieces into powder in my coffee grinder (which is almost never used for coffee but rather for grains and seeds).  It made just the right amount to refill my ground cinnamon container.  And I felt like the conquering pioneer woman!